Heart and Home (34 page)

Chapter Thirty-Four

Frozen earth crunched beneath my bare feet, but I felt no
cold as I treaded through the long scars of the harvested field. The snow was
thick as a blizzard swarming in the wind all around, but purpose drove me
onward, and I held my arm against my face to keep my vision clear. In the
distance I could make out a shadow, long tendrils of auburn hair stark against
the white wind.

Like me she held up one arm against her face so she could see
against the storm.

“Janice?” Her voice was like a trumpet sounding over the
howling storm.

“Mom?” I waded through the snow, which soaked into and clung
to my nightgown in icy clumps. I knew that logically I should have been
freezing, but my entire body was warmed by the simple notion of her presence.

“Here,” she called out. “I’m here.”

It was like I stepped into a bubble once I drew near her. The
snow raged on outside of us, and the wind was no more than a distant wail
calling out to me. Her long hair hung loosely over her shoulders, and when she
lifted her face to look at me it was as if all of her was aglow with golden
light.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I said, reaching out a hand to her.

She lifted her fingers to mine, and for a long moment we
stood there hand to hand as if an invisible wall stood between us. “I couldn’t
leave,” she told me. “Not when there was so much uncertainty, when you had so
much doubt.”

“But I know now,” I assured her.

Her face darkened with doubt as she asked, “And you’re sure?”

“I’ve never been more sure of anything.”

She nodded then, and clamped her fingers down gently over
mine so that we stood holding hands for a moment.

“I’ll be with you always.”

“I know,” I leaned in and touched my lips to her cheek. “But
don’t worry. We’ll be okay.”

Serenity brought light to her face, and as the light itself
grew brighter against the blizzard of a world turned white, she began to fade
until I stood there alone with the wind and snow swirling madly all around.

I sat upright with a gasp,
the bedroom grey with the coming dawn.

I leaned over and pulled
back the curtain to discover another storm swept in overnight and left the
streets white in its wake. It was Christmas morning, the first Christmas of my
entire life without my mother. That realization brought snippets of dream
memory rushing into my consciousness, and while I should have felt sad at her absence
from our lives a part of me was certain she was there with me.

She would always be there
with me.

The day unfolded slowly,
with Dad and me awkwardly exchanging gifts while Christmas music jingled from
the speakers surrounding the television. My mother had done quite a bit of
shopping in the months before she passed, and it felt strange opening her gifts
without her there watching over me. She always put special thought and meaning
into everything she did, and so my father, while glad to have passed on what
she’d wanted me to have, wasn’t quite sure how to comment.

Troy and Lottie arrived just
after noon, bringing more gifts for everyone to open, and with the two of them
there the awkward emptiness of the house didn’t feel so overpowering. I actually
started to feel comfortable, less burdened by the absence of the only woman in
the world I would have even considered coming home for just a few months ago.

I slipped into the kitchen
to check on the ham and Troy snuck in behind me. He wrapped me in his arms and
drew my back against his chest, leaning down to whisper, “How are you holding
out today?”

“I’m doing okay.” I nodded,
and as unexpected as that seemed, it was true. I wasn’t a blubbering wreck,
which was more than I thought I’d be when I thought about Christmas two months
earlier.

“I have another gift for
you, but it’s not here.”

“You already gave me more
than I ever could have asked for,” I insisted, turning into him and draping my
arms around his neck. “You didn’t have to get me anything else.”

“Well, this gift is a little
different,” He said. “Maybe after dinner you can come out to the house with
me.”

“Okay,” I nodded.
 

All through dinner my
curiosity distracted me, which in the end was probably a good thing as it kept
me from focusing on my mother. I had been flashing through that dream of her
all day and remembering what Diana said about having to let her go. Had my
telling her we would be okay in that dream signaled her release? Was she gone
from us now, or would my calling out in fear draw her quickly back to my side?

I couldn’t deny there was a
selfish part of me that longed to test my theory, but I held back and focused
on making my father smile as often as possible through dinner.

As I was clearing the dishes
away from the table, Troy took my hands and told me to let it be for a little
while.

“Janice and I are going for
a ride,” he announced, drawing me by the hands into the living room where Dad
and Lottie settled in to watch “The Bells of St. Mary’s” with Bing Crosby.

“Be careful,” Dad called as
Troy helped me into my coat. “You know with the holidays the road crews
probably did a half-ass job cleaning up today.”

“We’ll be fine, Dad,” I
promised.

Outside into the crisp
afternoon, I followed Troy to his truck making deliberate puffs with my breath
while he cleaned off the windshield from the last light layer of fresh snow
that fell during dinner. Safely nestled into the cab of his truck, I drew my
seatbelt across my lap and said, “Today has been the most bizarre day of my
life.”

“How come? I thought you
said you were doing okay.”

“No, I am doing okay.” I
shook my head as he turned out of the alley. “I don’t know. I guess mostly it’s
just weird, my mom not being here. It’s not bad, just different, you know?”

“Holidays are tough,” he noted.
“The first two Christmases after my dad died were just off, but these last
couple years we’ve found the spirit again.”

“That’s what it’s like,” I
agreed. “Like it’s all off somehow. And I don’t think I noticed it so much at
Thanksgiving because they didn’t make as big of deal out of it as they did
Christmas. Honestly the last two Thanksgivings I spent at my former boss’s
house, but Christmas they came to see me every year. They’d drive all morning
to get there before noon. Sometimes they would come the night before and my mom
would cook.”

“I bet it felt weird being
back here for Christmas.”

“For the first time in eight
years,” I laughed. “Nothing felt real when I woke up this morning, and
honestly, if you’d asked me last year if I’d ever come back here for Christmas,
much less to live, my answer would have been only for her.”

“And now?”

“Well, now it’s all
different, isn’t it?” I smirked across the truck playfully, and he grinned over
at me.

“Well, here’s hoping what I
have to show you makes up for it a little.”

“Are you going to let me in
on this little secret of yours?” I asked, turning my gaze away from the grayed
bank of snow lining the side of the road.

“And give away the
surprise?” Troy chuckled, turning to glance over at me with a sparkle in his eyes
that made me want to crawl into his lap and nibble his lips.

He didn’t say anything else
to tempt me, not even when I asked him for a hint about what he’d kept at the
house that he couldn’t bring with him. He only shook his head and said, “You’ll
see.”

It was a longer ride than
usual to the Kepner farm, on account of the roads being a little slick, but
when we finally arrived he hopped out of the truck with a spring in his step
and led me toward the back door. I didn’t have to wait on the porch step while
he unlocked. Nobody locked their doors in Sonesville, and while that thought
should have disturbed me after eight years in the city, it was actually kind of
refreshing to know there was no need. It was a place for families, where, if I
actually had children, I would be happy to raise them.

There weren’t too many
places in the world like that anymore.

I glanced up at Troy as he
pushed through the door and reached back for my hand, tangling our fingers
together before tugging me inside, and thought again about our future together.
What our children might look like, what kind of parents we would be.

“Where’s this surprise of
yours?”

“Follow me.”

He started up the staircase,
and I followed in his shadow, taking in parts of the house I’d never seen
before. It was rustic, but comfortable, the kind of place I could easily see
myself wandering through in slippers in the middle of the night. That
realization gave me a moment’s pause, the tingling in my stomach growing
tighter as I came to understand exactly what that meant. It could be years
before we even got to that stage in our relationship, but I had a feeling it
wouldn’t be that long.

I was committed to the idea
of my future, not just with Troy, but in the town I’d spent so much of my life
fighting to get away from. I didn’t know what I was going to do there, how I
was going to make my way when opportunity felt millions of miles away, but it
didn’t matter. I would make it work and I would be happy. That was all there
was to it.

Leading me back through the
hallway, Troy ducked in through the master bedroom, which was littered with
boxes as if it had been undergoing renovations. I stopped next to the bed,
which showed clear signs of having been slept in, and crossed my arms as he
paused in front of a door near the conjoined bathroom.

“Did you move into the
house?” I asked, squinting curiously around the mess.

He shrugged noncommittally
and grinned. “I’ve been slowly making the transition. Come on. Up here.”

Opening the door and
flipping on the light switch, I could see even from where I was standing that
it wound upward into the attic. I hesitated for a moment, and then felt my feet
began to move almost without my urging. I was soon standing on the bottom
stair, breathing in the distinct scent of fresh paint. I felt my brow furrow,
and began taking the steps one at a time, glancing up occasionally to see Troy
already at the top of the stairs and grinning down at me.

I don’t know what I expected
of an old attic, or why he was taking me up there. Truth be told I hadn’t
thought much about it at all since he’d mentioned renovating the attic and
turning it into an office for me before the move home. I suppose I thought it
would be dark and cramped, stuffy and smelling like moth balls and old things
taken up there and forgotten about by Troy’s grandparents almost a century
earlier.

I hadn’t noticed walking up
the stairs, but my heart was in my throat, pulsing and aching with unexpected
emotion. The attic was bright and spacious, the pale yellow walls bare and
waiting for someone to come along and fill them with inspirational posters and
a corkboard filled with ideas. There were half a dozen bookshelves lining the
west wall and a counter space hovering over a dorm-sized refrigerator. A coffee
pot was already plugged into the wall on that counter, just begging to be
filled up and turned on.

“You…” My gaze landed on the
bare desk, lining the far wall beside a window overlooking the snow-laden
fields. Inspiration simply longing to be put on the page seemed to linger in
the air, making it feel even more impossible than before to breathe. “You did
this for me?”

“I know we haven’t made the
decision to actually move in together yet, and I don’t want to rush you into
anything, but once I got the bug to do this, I don’t know… I couldn’t stop
myself. It felt like the right thing to do. I wanted you to have a place in
this house that felt like home to you.”

“Troy…” I faltered, shaking
my head in awe. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say
anything.” He was still smiling, a gesture that promised there really was no
pressure for us to move in together. “I just thought… I don’t know, even if you
don’t want to move in for a few months, it’d be nice for you to have someplace
you to get away from it all and do what it is you want. Your own office, or
whatever you want to make of it. Who knows, maybe you’ll even write a novel up
here one day, or something.”

“This… this is so sweet, I
don’t even know what to say.” I took a step toward him, feeling a little
flustered, but not so much that I wasn’t able to put my arms around him and
squeeze. “Thank you.”

His chin brushed against my
face, the delicate scruff of facial hair tickling and sending shivers rippling
through me. “There’s something else too.”

“More than this?” I balked
in disbelief, withdrawing from his arms to look up at him.

“It’s not much, and I guess
it’s not really for you, but you were the first person I wanted to share it
with. I didn’t even tell my mom yet.”